Twelve-year-old Dossi Rabinowitz has come home to Manhattan's Lower East Side after spending two weeks as a Fresh Air child on the Meade family's Vermont farm in 1910, in Faraway Summer by Johanna Hurwitz. In this sequel, Dear Emma, Dossi recounts the changes in her life through letters to Emma Meade, including the launch of her eighth-grade year, her sister Ruthi's marriage to a pharmacist and, on a larger scale, the 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory (where Ruthi had previously worked).